‘Venom’ Eats Up $80 Million For the Biggest October Opening Weekend Ever at the Box Office

Venom has a voracious appetite, and not just for human heads and tater tots. Sony’s Venom gobbled up buckets of dollars at the the box office this weekend, landing at number one and breaking a couple records.

The origin story for the Spider-Man villain may have gotten some dreadful reviews from critics – it currently has a 35 Metacritic score and 32 percent at Rotten Tomatoes – but the people showed up to see Tom Hardy act like a lunatic. Venom topped the box office this weekend, gobbling up $80 million domestically. That makes it the biggest October debut of all time. The previous October champ was Gravity, which opened to $55.8 million in 2013. That’s pretty huge considering the Hardy-led movie, which had a reported budget of $100 million, was expected to open in the $55 million - $65 million dollar range.

As far as 2018, Venom can now claim the seventh slot in this year’s biggest opening weekend this year. It beat out Ant-Man and the Wasp ($75.8 million) and came in close behind Solo: A Star Wars Story ($84.4 million). It also broke another record a few days ago, with the biggest Thursday night preview ($10 million) of all time for the month.

Wait… do you hear that? What’s that voice?

“FEED ME EDDIE!”

OK, Venom, chill. I know you’re still hungry but we’re out of tater tots. How about some more box office dollars to munch on? Good, because internationally Venom earned a whopping $125.2 million. Hardy’s alien symbiote topped the charts in 57 out of 58 international markets, bringing its global total up to $205.2 million. The question remains though: will Venom be able to maintain its number one spot next weekend, or will the film quickly plummet after such a huge opening? Given that the movie is, well, not good, there’s a strong chance it make have a significant second weekend drop.

While the big-eyed alien with the unintelligible Hardy voice toppedA Star Is Born – those Gaga fans should’ve tried harder! – the Bradley Cooper remake still had a pretty great opening in second place. The Lady Gaga-led film outpaced projections of a +$25 million debut and instead brought in an $41.25 million over the weekend, and $42.6 million including early Wednesday night previews. That former number makes it the tenth largest opening October weekend ever. Two weeks ago the box office had one of the worst weekends of 2018, and now a long-tongued pile of black goo and the remake of a Hollywood classic have delivered an impressive boost. We’re far from the shallow now, Eddie.